Busch was right to speak his mind

I expected there would be a little bit of blowback against Kyle Busch for what he said when he got out of his race-winning car Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway, and we’re certainly hearing it.

Busch won the Food City 500 and then basically used victory lane as a platform to tell everybody the car of tomorrow – and this is the word he chose – "sucked."

He called the new car a "thing" about 20 different ways and said it was "terrible" and no fun to drive. Now keep in mind he did most of this as he was being interviewed as the winner just before they handed him the big trophy.

I have to admit that I was a little bit surprised when one reporter asked a NASCAR official if Busch’s use of "sucked" might draw him any kind of penalty for using bad language on television. As unpleasant as you might think that term is, it’s not a word the Federal Communications Commission has among those that can get television networks fined when someone uses them.

Every time someone says "hell" or "damn" in a postrace interview now, I get 20 or more e-mails asking me why that guy doesn’t get fined the way Dale Earnhardt Jr. did for his use of another four-letter word after a win at Talladega a couple of years ago.

You will note that I didn’t write the word Earnhardt Jr. used, and that should tell you something right there. It’s a word that, right or wrong, is considered "wrong" beyond whatever limit might be drawn on language that’s fair game in public discourse.

You might consider "hell" or "damm" or even "sucked" just as bad, but the people drawing the lines on such things don’t. When it comes to television, that line is drawn specifically by the FCC. The reason Earnhardt Jr. got penalized is that the word he used is considered obscene by the FCC and that put the network carrying that race – along with the stations that aired the broadcast – at risk of being fined. NASCAR penalized Earnhardt Jr. to stop others from putting the TV guys in that predicament again.

It’s not NASCAR’s rule that the Earnhardt Jr. word is worth a points deduction and these other words aren’t. It’s the government’s. The blowback that I expected and am hearing for Kyle Busch regards the attitude his words represent.

Some fans feel that Busch gets paid pretty well to put up with the challenges of driving whatever race car they strap him into and that he should just shut up and drive it. Others feel that, at the very least, Busch’s remarks could have been saved for later instead of being part of his initial reaction after a victory.

I reject the first reaction. Busch and the rest of the drivers in NASCAR’s top series have not only the right but the responsibility to be honest with the fans about what they believe. There’s nothing worse than a guy who’s being an obvious shill for NASCAR because he believes sucking up will help him down the road. Fans see right through that. Some drivers go too far in complaining about virtually everything NASCAR does (some of us in the media are guilty of that, too), but no driver should be expected to swallow his tongue before giving what might be considered a "negative" response.

On the other hand, maybe Busch could have tempered his initial remarks to some degree. "We still have a lot of work to do on this new car," which is one of the things Busch said, sounds a lot better than saying "this thing sucks." And maybe victory lane isn’t the place to proclaim your verdict on a car you’ve just raced for the first time.

This new car that NASCAR debuted last weekend isn’t the one these drivers are used to. Until they’ve raced it a few times, they won’t know what "good" is in terms of how this car handles. All they know now is that it almost universally was felt not to be as "good" as the old car, which is the only car most of these guys have ever raced in at this level.

But as soon as the Bristol race was over, everybody wanted drivers to "grade" the car of tomorrow project. Some guys, including the race winner, elected to do so. I think it’s awfully hard to be too critical of a guy for simply giving you an honest answer to your question, no matter how bad the question might be.